Outing ‘Machiavellian’ Robert E. Lighthizer: The ‘New NAFTA,’ the USMCA, Transitions Us to Toward a NAU

Patriotic Americans love President Trump’s gut feelings about what’s wrong and his tireless energy to fight for us to right those wrongs in regulatory matters, Congress, the Justice Department and the media. Name one other person that could measure up to his zeal and persistence in the face of such an overwhelming onslaught.

However, he must have counsel on many pressing issues from advisors he feels he can trust. Therein, lies his vulnerability. Since no one is literally perfect, it is a shame that he has misjudged or chosen to be directed to believe in utter snakes as some of his closest advisors. Way too many leftovers, swamp people and the worst of all ‘bonafide’ members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). CFR members like his lead negotiator, Robert E. Lighthizer, for the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).

Even on Fox News, America is being sold on Lighthizer by so many financial and trade pundits endorsing him and stating he is the best we have. Yet when you pursue finding out what is really in this heralded wonder of trade pacts you will be shocked.

The text of this mammoth sovereignty wresting mechanism of the globalists is 1809 pages long. Lots of controlling rules that fly in the face of real free ‘fair’ trade. There are good people I know of who are pleased to proclaim that this do- good ‘thing’ will benefit our agriculture. America doesn’t need ‘others in control’ to make our deals for us on agriculture. The Ag issue is mere bait to entice some to speak well of this globalist Trojan Horse behemoth for control.

Following is a list of talking points condensed from various John Birch Society and The New American sources.

If Americans don’t show their disapproval, the Deep State may ride the Trump train to congressional approval for the USMCA and derail American sovereignty in the process.

Globalist and CFR President Richard N. Haass called it “World order 2.0.”

It was negotiated by Robert Lighthizer, who negotiated the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP).

The Huffington Post: “At least half of the men and women standing behind Trump during his Rose Garden ceremony praising the new deal were the same career service staff who negotiated nearly identical provisions in TPP, which Trump railed against.”

Bruce Heyman, Democrat, former Goldman Sachs vice president said, “Two thirds of this agreement is essentially going back to TPP. All they did was take so much of the language of TPP and implement it here, as it pertains to Canada.”

A side by side comparison of the USMCA and the TPP shows extensive overlap. Virtually all the problems inherent in the TPP are likewise contained in the USMCA, such as the erosion of national sovereignty, submission to a new global governance authority, the unrestricted movement of foreign nationals, workers’ rights to collective bargaining, and regional measures to combat climate change.

It establishes a USMCA Free Trade Commission that can “consider proposals to amend or modify” the agreement. It can make changes without the consent of Congress. It completely undermines Congress’ constitutional Article I, Section 8 power to regulate trade with foreign nations such as Mexico and Canada, and to impose tariffs on them should the need arise, as in the case of national security.

A North American Competitiveness Committee (chapter 26) is intended for “promoting further economic integration among [all three countries].”

Richard N. Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, tweeted, “The USMCA looks to be the trade pact formerly known as NAFTA plus 10-20%. Hope it becomes precedent for TPP.”

It subordinates the U.S. to the International Labor Organization (ILO), which mandates “the effective recognition of collective bargaining.”

The current WTO has already ruled against the U.S., denying the right to require labels of origin for beef, pork, and other meat products. More of this type of decisions could be expected.

Chapter 17.5 of the USMCA includes: “No party shall adopt or maintain…a measure that…imposes a limitation on…the total number of natural persons that may be employed in a particular financial service sector or that a financial institution or cross service supplier may employ…in the form of numerical quotas or the requirement of an economic needs test.”

It recognizes Mexico’s sovereignty, but not that of the U.S. or Canada:

Mexico reserves its sovereign right to reform its Constitution and its domestic legislation; and

The Mexican State has the direct, inalienable and imprescriptible ownership of all hydrocarbons in the subsoil of the national territory, including the continental shelf and the exclusive economic zone located outside the territorial sea and adjacent thereto, in strata or deposits, regardless of their physical conditions pursuant to Mexico’s Constitution.

It calls for further energy integration. In the GAO’s report, North American Energy Integration, it is reported that “State and DOE officials we interviewed said they did not expect the U.S. renegotiation of NAFTA and withdrawal from the Paris Agreement to have a significant impact and stated that the energy sector is already well integrated.”

NASCENT NORTH AMERICAN UNION

The USMCA also contains language that will undoubtedly be exploited to merge the three countries into a regional economic union, much like the EU — language that non-globalist Republicans fought against in the past. In June 2015, then-Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) exposed how buried within the still-secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership’s more than 5,500 pages was language for creating an entity similar in makeup to what he described as a “nascent European Union” — he was referring to the TPP Commission. He said, speaking from the Senate floor: “Even more significant to me is that it [the TPP agreement] creates something that is a non-trading entity, a commission, a transPacific international commission.” He explained: “This commission will meet regularly. It will be … entitled to make the TPP say different things, eliminate provisions it does not like, and add provisions it does like. In fact, the commission is required to meet regularly and to hear advice for changes from outside groups and from inside committees of the commission so that they can update the situation to change circumstances.”

Tariffs to remedy problems would be out of U.S. hands. Steel and aluminum tariffs for national security such as those imposed by President Trump on Canada and the European Union are not permitted…

Delving deeper, Sessions further elaborated, “It says it is designed to promote the international movement of people, services, and products — basically the same language used to start the European Union.”

Everything Sessions said about the TPP could also accurately be said about the USMCA. Chapter 30 of the USMCA establishes the creation of a “Free Trade Commission,” which is broader in scope and power than the original 1994 NAFTA Free Trade Commission. According to Article 30.2, the USMCA reads, “The Commission shall”:

(a) consider matters relating to the implementation or operation of this Agreement;

(b) consider proposals to amend or modify this Agreement;

(c) supervise the work of committees, working groups, and other subsidiary bodies established under this Agreement;

(d) consider ways to further enhance trade and investment between the Parties;

(e) adopt and update the Rules of Procedure and Code of conduct; and

(f) review the roster established under Article 31.8 (Roster and Qualifications of Panelists) every three years and, when appropriate, constitute a new roster.

In other words, the USMCA’s Free Trade Commission can make changes to the agreement itself, implement changes to the agreement, change the rules by which it operates, approve who serves on its lower subordinate committees, and oversee the work of those committees like an international bureaucracy or government — all without the consent or approval of Congress.The Free Trade Commission will also oversee committees on Agricultural Trade, Rules of Origin and Origin Procedures, Textile and Apparel Trade Matters, Customs and Trade Facilitation, Technical Barriers to Trade, Government Procurement, Transportation Services, Financial Services, Telecommunications, Intellectual Property Rights, State-Owned Enterprises and Designated Monopolies, the Environment, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises Issues, North American Competitiveness, Good Regulatory Practices, and Private Commercial Disputes.

The committees will meet regularly or on an annual basis, depending on the committee, and like the Free Trade Commission, unelected government representatives from each of the three countries will comprise them.

Committees can propose changes or revisions to the chapter in the agreement that corresponds to their area. All of the committees’ work, discussions, findings, and recommendations are to be submitted to the Free Trade Commission for further consideration. And much like the TPP Commission, the Free Trade Commission can make changes to the agreement without the consent of Congress. In fact, the agreement completely undermines Congress’ constitutional Article I, Section 8 power to regulate trade with foreign nations, such as Mexico and Canada, and to impose tariffs on them should the need arise, as in the case of national security.

Tariffs to remedy problems would be out of U.S. hands. Steel and aluminum tariffs for national security such as those imposed by President Trump on Canada and the European Union are not permitted by individual EU member-states, states that are bound together by a regional entity similar to one that the USMCA would create to bind America. One of the purported aims of the EU was to avert another world war on the continent by making all of its member countries economically interdependent, meaning that even Germany’s and France’s national security is intertwined with that of the other EU member nations. The thought is that no single country in the EU should be able to be economically and, in turn, militarily self-sufficient, lest it become a threat to its neighboring countries and the continent as a whole. However, the very ideology hoisted to prevent the rise of another Nazi Germany may also prevent a European country from being able to defend itself from such a threat in the future.

Rather than preventing another Nazi Germany from arising, power is concentrated at the EU level. The same arguments in favor of the EU also work in reverse against the collective body. Furthermore, at the EU level, regulations have a direct and immediate effect on EU member states, and EU directives, which are a bit broader than regulations, set EU objectives, which the member countries are then expected to translate into new national legislation.

Individual European nations sacrifice or “trade” their individual autonomy and security — in turn sacrificing the freedoms of their citizens — to be part of a supposedly stronger whole. However, if one country chooses to leave the group, the other countries oppose it and try to stop it, as was the case with Brexit. Hence why membership in such transnational economic (and eventually political) unions is unquestionably more detrimental than beneficial.

TOWARD GLOBAL UNION

Though there are often short-term economic advantages of “free trade agreements,” such as the USMCA’s new access to the Canadian dairy market allowing U.S. farmers to sell their cheese and milk products to Canadian retailers and consumers, the pluses pale in comparison to the long-term cost and consequences of losing national sovereignty — sovereignty lost to unelected and unaccountable transnational and global governing bodies that are far removed from the influence of the nation’s people.

In fact, a North American Competitiveness Committee is to be established with “a view to promoting further economic integration among the Parties” (i.e., the United States, Mexico, and Canada) and “enhancing the competitiveness of North American exports.” (Emphasis added.) It reads as though the purpose is to make the North American bloc competitive with other trade blocs such as the EU, ASEAN, and Eurasian Economic Union, but of course, this is simply a ploy by the Deep State to abolish the modern international system of sovereign nation-states to, in turn, replace it with a transitional world order composed of interdependent transnational unions, with the view of further global integration toward a socialistic one-world economic union.

Entities such as the EU are dictatorial, with the executives in charge put in place by the world’s wealthiest, most influential people — hardly a situation that bodes well for individual rights and freedoms, or, as leftists claim to want, “democracy.”

Today the EU sees itself as a “post national” entity: It has its own flag, capital in Brussels, passports, foreign and diplomatic service, anthem (“Ode to Joy”), currency (the euro), central bank, supreme court (in the form of the European Court of Justice — ECJ), parliament, president, executive branch (the EU Commission, which elects the president), and constitution (the Lisbon Treaty). Despite what it may say, the EU possesses all the hallmarks of a nation state, but at a larger level, transcending the nation-states that make it up.

In the case of Britain, most of its laws come from or have been influenced by the decisions of the EU. According to a research study conducted by Business for Britain, “Between 1993 and 2014, 64.7 per cent of UK law can be deemed to be EU-influenced. EU regulations accounted for 59.3 per cent of all UK law. UK laws implementing EU directives accounted for 5.4 per cent of total laws in force in UK,” the report stated. Further elaborating, “This body of legislation consists of 49,699 exclusively ‘EU’ regulations, 4,532 UK measures which implement EU directives and 29,573 UK only laws.” British MEP (Member of the European Parliament) and leader of the pro-sovereignty United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) Nigel Farage has repeatedly stated that “75 percent of our laws are made in Brussels,” the capital of the European Union. Regardless of the merits (or lack thereof) of these laws, it should be Britons through their representatives in Parliament that make their nation’s laws, not a collection of foreign bureaucrats across the English Channel.

Britain’s recent Brexit vote to withdraw membership from the EU should serve as a wake-up call for Americans, as the U.S. government proposes entering into a similar transnational union. As the case of the EU shows us, America’s fight against globalism must be won before our globalist politicians cede away too much of our power.

The major steps in creating the EU were not met without resistance and reservation. In 1992, when Denmark rejected the Maastricht Treaty, that was not the end of Denmark’s membership in the union. Denmark was forced to continue voting on it until the result was a “yes.” At the time, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl told the Danes: “You are just a little people. You cannot dam the Rhine.” The same happened in Ireland. The Irish people rejecting the Treaty of Nice in 2001 following a national referendum. A second referendum was held a year later, which approved the treaty. The second vote was quickly accepted as final. To the EU’s ruling Deep State elite, it does not matter that the citizens of the countries in the European Union repeatedly vote against their country’s continued participation in the Euro-state project, the EU will force it on them.

The new USMCA’s Free Trade Commission fits the criteria of James Madison’s definition of “tyranny”: Writing in The Federalist, No. 47, Founding Father James Madison stated, “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” The USMCA underscores the urgent need not only to get out of the original NAFTA but to likewise reject the USMCA and all other so-called trade agreements that erode American sovereignty through the establishment of transnational executive commissions and that subordinate the United States to international regimes such as the United Nations, World Trade Organization, and ILO.

¡VIVA MÉXICO!

A chapter in the USMCA puts emphasis on powers that America and Canada will give up, by highlighting powers reserved to Mexico. Chapter 8, entitled “Recognition of the Mexican State’s Direct, Inalienable, and Imprescriptible Ownership of Hydrocarbons,” simply states that “the United States and Canada recognize that”:

(a) Mexico reserves its sovereign right to reform its Constitution and its domestic legislation; and

(b) The Mexican State has the direct, inalienable and imprescriptible ownership of all hydrocarbons in the subsoil of the national territory, including the continental shelf and the exclusive economic zone located outside the territorial sea and adjacent thereto, in strata or deposits, regardless of their physical conditions pursuant to Mexico’s Constitution.

The road will be tough now that Trump, who called both the TPP and NAFTA a “disaster” and the “worst trade agreements in history,” heralds the USMCA as one of his many “promises kept.” But it can be done if people are informed that the USMCA is everything that Trump hated about NAFTA and the TPP.

That is great news for Mexico, particularly its political and energy sovereignty; however, no such chapter affirms the same recognition for the United States, or Canada’s sovereignty. In fact, Mexico’s constitution is the only constitution that any part of the USMCA affirms to be “pursuant to.”

Unlike the U.S. Constitution, the Mexican constitution gives its nation’s federal government power to regulate whole sectors of its economy: “hydrocarbons, mining, chemical substances, explosives, pyrotechnics, movie industry, commerce, bets, draw and raffles, intermediation and financial services, electrical and nuclear energy.” In the United States, the U.S. government has taken charge of many of these areas, especially energy, despite not being granted powers in those areas by the Constitution, and these sectors will likely be controlled by the Free Trade Commission through its subcommittees covering the Environment, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises Issues, North American Competitiveness, Good Regulatory Practices, and Private Commercial Disputes.

ENERGY INTEGRATION OR SOVEREIGNTY?

In the area of energy, the three countries are already merging. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released an eye-opening report revealingly entitled “North American Energy Integration.” This 58-page report, which was discreetly posted on the GAO website in August, is intended for the House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere. The report outlines in detail the progress of eight U.S. federal government agencies and departments in integrating the energy sectors of Canada, Mexico, and the United States.

According to the GAO report, the “United States cooperates with Canada and Mexico on integrating North American energy markets and infrastructure (energy integration),” further elaborating, “Cooperation occurs at the presidential and ministerial levels (e.g., the countries’ secretaries or ministries of energy) for strategic issues and at the agency level for technical issues.”

In researching for its report, the GAO surveyed various U.S. government officials from the agencies involved in the energy integration scheme. According to those surveyed, a total of 81 energy integration-related schemes were conducted from 2014 through 2017. Those energy integration schemes are listed and summarized in Appendix III of the GAO’s report.

The report also stated that U.S., Canadian, and Mexican officials “expressed general satisfaction with intergovernmental cooperation on energy integration” and that they suggested “further work in areas such as aligning energy regulations.” (Emphasis added.)

Harmonizing energy regulations of the three countries would more easily facilitate their merger. The logical conclusion of these 81 energy integration schemes, and further work to synchronize the energy regulations of all three countries, is a North American Union, much like the present and already integrated European Union. Page six of the GAO report states: “NAFTA has enhanced North American energy integration, facilitating a greater flow of oil, natural gas, and petroleum-derived products among all three North American countries.” Although the report was published prior to the release of the new USMCA, it stated that then-ongoing NAFTA talks would have little effect on the efforts to integrate North America’s energy sectors. According to the report, “State and DOE officials we interviewed said they did not expect the U.S. renegotiation of NAFTA and withdrawal from the Paris Agreement to have a significant impact and stated that the energy sector in North America is already well integrated.”

Among the objectives of the North American energy integration plan is to merge the energy grids of all three countries into one single North American energy grid. In fact, page 43 of the GAO report discusses efforts to integrate the U.S.-Mexico energy grid and the need to “enhance the resiliency of the North American energy grid,” rather than referring to it as the energy grids of the three separate countries. (Emphasis added.) The question then naturally arises: Under whose jurisdiction would such a North American energy grid eventually fall? Would it be under Mexico, Canada, the United States, or that of an even higher transitional authority, such as the USMCA’s Free Trade Commission? At present, the answer is unclear, but one thing that is clear is that if the United States goes ahead with the USMCA, it will wreak havoc on America’s national sovereignty.

CAN USMCA BE STOPPED?

The USMCA can most certainly be stopped. It happened before with the TPP and Free Trade Area of the Americas, and it can happen again; however, the Deep State will not make it easy. The United States didn’t get on board with the TPP, even with a seemingly popular president — Obama — who lauded the globalist-controlled Deep State. Obama failed to convince much of his own liberal base to support the TPP. The TPP’s widespread unpopularity resonated in the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries, with both candidates, Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Hillary Clinton, coming out against the agreement. On the Right, those who supported real free trade, such as Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.), would later change their initial support to oppose the agreement. Most Americans, on both the Left and the Right, recognized the TPP as a direct threat to American sovereignty and jobs.

The road will be tough now that Trump, who called both the TPP and NAFTA a “disaster” and the “worst trade agreements in history,” heralds the USMCA as one of his many “promises kept.” But it can be done if people are informed that the USMCA is everything that Trump hated about NAFTA and the TPP, plus more — and that the real solution is to have Congress, not multinational or international entities, decide trade and other policies that fall within the enumerated powers of the Constitution.

It is up to us at the grassroots level, through organizations such as The John Birch Society and publications such as The New American magazine, to inform the electorate, opinion molders, members of Congress, and President Trump about what’s really in this USMCA agreement and the need to stop it, in addition to withdrawing the United States from the original NAFTA. Both NAFTA and the USMCA lay the groundwork for a North American Union and threaten our constitutional Republic. Now is the time to act.